to make this successful. this is a family of agencies that care about our small businesses. last time i looked, there were over 71,000 businesses who registered that had less than 100 employees. that's an incredible sign of businesses that have -- that are our backbone, that hire a number of people. they're not the biggest employers, but they do hire the largest number of employees. over 51% of the city's employees are hired by small businesses. and i want to continue supporting them, nurturing them, have them increase. i hate seeing vacant, vacant buildings, vacant spots. benny knows every time we walk down there, what's going on with this site? what's going on with that site? char men chu knows that as well. we've done a lot of walks together. i want to see every one of these vacancies filled with small bustling business necessarition. we need them to hire more local folks. and one way to do it, one sure way to do it is to make sure that they meet the a-d-a

requirements, the federal requirements, the state requirements, our local efforts to make sure that those that have disabilities can also shop and be a participant in our local economy. so, with that, joaquin, thank you for your leadership. we get to launch this wonderful program right here. there are three streets in district 4 that are going to benefit from this. we're going to roll this out to all other 85 neighborhood corridors in the rest of the city. it's that many? 25? [laughter] >> all right, christmas must be coming early. i'll talk to supervisor chu about any more monies we can release. thanks very much. >> thank you, mr. mayor. (applause) >> thank you. and now i'd like to bring up the supervisor, the district that we're in today, someone who is no stranger to the importance of supporting our small businesses whose family used to run a restaurant. and like to invite to speak now supervisor carmen chu.

(applause) >> thank you, everyone, for being here today. i want to thank the mayor so much for coming out and launching this pilot here on irving street. as you know, when i came on board in 2007, one of the most important things we wanted to relay was how important it was to not only support our downtown businesses, but also to support all the small businesses that are located across the city in our communities. for many of the folks who come down to irving street or noriega or taraval or jude a a lot of the times people who come here who own the shops are locales are debttionv . they are people who live in our communities who want to help make our neighborhoods thrive. in 2007 when we first came on board and subsequent years, one of the things that we noticed was that there were a number of different businesses that were being targeted with some of these drive-by lawsuits. many a times when i spoke to businesses, they did not know about the requirements that they had to meet with the federal a-d-a laws. once letters came in, they

didn't really know how to respond. they sort of put it away. and it was more egregious especially for our mono lingual communities and our merchants who really didn't understand the correspondence that they were seeing. and, so, it really left them in a bad position. some of the businesses found that they had to close down their shops because they simply could not afford to make the a-d-a improvements and could not afford to pay the penalties associated with that. that's something we don't want to see. especially in the last few years, i think san francisco, we have really powered through some rough years economically. i hear with many of my merchants on sirfing street here who stuck with the neighborhood, stuck with this community and have gone through tough economic times and weathered it with us. we just want to make sure that we do everything we can as a city to support them. and, so, this issue about a-d-a com playboytionv fa public libraritionv is something that been going on for quite sometime. people say in san francisco how big is this problem? we know that since 2005 there are at least 300 lawsuits that have happened about a-d-a on a-d-a compliance issues in the city and county of san francisco. this is not insignificant for a

city our size. and we know that these are things that we have to address. since that time with mayor lee who has actually done a number of things, we've worked with the bar association to make sure that we have legal advice that can be given to our merchants on a very cost-effective basis. we've worked with regina and her shop with office of small business to make sure that we're doing training videos and making sure that different businesses are compliant and they know what their responsibilities are. we work with regina's shop to work with the community opportunity fund to set aside a million dollars to be directed towards improvement loans for small businesses to deal with a-d-a access issues. and i think this is sort of the next big step that the city is taking to make sure that we're supporting our small businesses in a very direct and hands on way. with this pilot, i am proud to announce that we have over $08,000 that will be going to this district to help with cast inspections. these are basically inspections of businesses to say what it is that you must do over a period

of time to become compliant with a-d-a requirements and rules. and these are things that will really help our blitznesses weather any lawsuits and really plan to make sure their businesses are accessible to all san franciscans. so, today i'm very proud of that. we're going to see over 30 businesses be able to have a casp inspection. that is a very meaningful piece to be able to help them weather some lawsuits if they should come down the pipeline. in addition to that, we expect to see $70,000 in actual physical improvement grants that will be coming into the district as well. and, so, i know that the mayor will be looking very intently to see how this program works, not only in my district, but also across the way in the richmond district and see whether this is a program that we can launch even wider city-wide. so, again, i'm really, really thankful for the mayor for his investment, and his dedication to small business. we talked a lot about supporting our small businesses and a lot of times i hear a lot of lip service to it. this is actually putting your mouth, your pocket where your mouth is and actually making that investment to make sure we

support our small businesses. again, i want to thank the mayor. i want to thank all of my small businesses who have weathered the years here. * and of course to all of our departments who have been absolutely phenomenal with this effort. thank you. (applause) >> all right. thank you, supervisor. and we also know that it's so important to make sure that we get the workout on the streets and we have to -- the right kind of nonprofit partners who help us achieve the goals of a program like this one is so important to our small businesses. so i'd like to invite up to speak frank baumgartner from small business economic developer to help get the word out with supervisor chu. so, frank? >> thanks, everybody, for being here. i'm with asian neighborhood design, project coordinator over there and we're a nonprofit architecture firm that's been around 40 years, specializing in improvements for small businesses and affordable housing. and we're really excited to be teamed up with osb and oewd on this venture to bring education

about the importance of disabled access. and it's our aim to really make sure that all these small businesses are inclusive to all patrons with the space that has the accessible upgrades and this a-d-a compliance. thank you. (applause) >> and one of the most important parts of the program of investing neighborhoods is making sure we're listening to the needs of our neighborhood partners. and to speak to those issues, are some of the small businesses who know how important it is to make sure we're getting the word out and who want to make sure their neighbors, small business neighbors are supported. one of those people is angela tickler, the hardware store across the street who will speak to the importance of this program now. (applause) >> angela. >> good morning. i'm also the president of our local merchants association. and, so, we have done a lot of work with carmen and katie's help over the last few years trying to educate particularly

our mono lingual merchants in the area how they can protect themselves against these lawsuits, which we know for a fact can close small businesses to have to close, which is a shame. * cause small businesses, in addition to hiring 51% of the people in the city, are also a huge part of the city's character and individuality, the things that make san francisco special and we want to make sure that that can keep going on. it is incredible that the mayor and carmen chu have figured out how to do this program as a small business owner myself, i am unable to afford to be able to pay for a casp inspection, yet i know how important it could be to me should a lawsuit come my way. so, i will be applying for one of these inspections and i am encouraging all my fellow merchants in this area to do the same, to try and take advantage of what is a great program that the mayor and carmen are piloting here in conjunction with those other

agencies. it is important for us to be able to serve everybody in our community, but sometimes it's cost prohibitive for small merchants to be able to do that. so, we don't want to see people going under by not being able to comply. so, this program will be really important to our merchants as well as others across the city and i hope and think it will be very, very successful. thank you. (applause) >> i want to thank you so much, angela, and for all your leadership as the president of the outer sunset mission and professional association here in the neighborhood. so, thank you. (applause) >> as we said, we want to make sure that we're reaching everyone in a culturally competent way through the program. to speak to that, the partner has done a lot of that work reaching up and down corridors like this one here. that's martin lam from good will. so, martin, if you could come up and speak. >> thank you, thank you very much. (applause) >> hi, on behalf of good will industry, i would like to -- i'm very honored to thank mayor ed lee and supervisor carmen chu for setting aside $400,000

to help local businesses to become a-d-a compliant. we filed with supervisor chu's office in the past to make sure we get the word out, make sure they know how to do the a-d-a -- more update for the a-d-a. and a lot of our businesses, most of our neighbors in this community are small businesses, mom and pop stores and who don't have a lot of cash flow every month. so, we are very grateful for the mayor and supervisor's office for giving us the support. as you know, lawsuits can mean for a business that they have to close down if they don't have the cash to defend themselves hiring a lawyer. so, this past year alone, a lot of the small businesses actually have to move out of the city because of people doing drive-by lawsuits. here at the good will industry we are very grateful and one of our mission is to help people

to create job opportunities for people who come here and work. so, one of the things that we care for is creating jobs in the city and preserving jobs in the city. so, last year we were able to have about 7,000 people just to come by and to shop for us and to provide job opportunities and training opportunities throughout our missions and our [speaker not understood]. once again, i want to thank the mayor and carmen chu for helping us to get this funding. thank you. (applause) >> thank you all again so much for coming out. as you can see, this is a team effort so we can have the most and strongest collective impact in corridors like these and like the one investing in the neighborhoods program. i know the supervisor was very excited to get this program up and running right away. she'll be joining with the job squad member who has recently come onto the investing neighborhoods team, members of the office of small business to

make sure we're getting the word out about this program right now. so, i just want to say thank you to all of you, to rob black from the restaurant association, benny yee to being here, our merchants, our neighbors and all the city partners who really believe in supporting the businesses and of course to todd from the office of economic and work force development, supervisor chu and our mayor ed lee. thank you so much for this opportunity to help out our small businesses in our community. thank you very much and we'll be available for questions later on. thanks. (applause) (applause)

>> so nicely here, and very happy that all of you could come out and join us, you know, on this evening. my namey. the director of the night rover challenge. i'm going to kind of be the moderator for tonight, as we go through this first-ever

challenge america summit. so i've got just a few things that, you know, i wanted to do with everyone, before we get into the program. first of all, i just want to take a minute and have everyone just look around this room. in this room, we have amazing people that are corporate, nonprofit, and government, all focused on challenge driven innovation in some way or another. this is a really powerful,interf people that are gathered here to look at how competitions can drive innovation. that's what tonight is all about, is, you know, the next step in creating a real wave of innovation. my job tonight is just to give you a little bit of background on what we are, what we're tiqp)q)s that we have.roup of so just to get going with that, i want to tell you a little bit about this thing called the night rover/< challenge. this is a collaboration between

the clean tech open, unoodle, and nasa. it's a program from nasa's office of centennial challenges. and it's challengin the best innovators in america to create radical new energy storage technology. you know, way above what we have now. this is something very powerful, to be able to keep rovers going on the moon, in mars, things that could be useful, in your cell electric vehicles, something that just is a radical leap in new technology. but i don't want to go into a lot of detail on that. you'll hear more about nasa's efforts later. and what i'm going to do1r is ge a little more background on challenge-driven innovation. and i'm going to do that just by plaijerrizing some people because it makes it a loteasier for me. i want to look at this quote, prize is a very old -- an old idea that is surprisingly powerful in our modern society.

this is by a study that by mckenzie and company, back in 2010. prize is a very old idea, very powerful in our modern society. surprisingly powerful in our modern society. mckenzie also said this, 32,000, in 2010, there were 32,000no competitions, competitions, prizes, awards. that's a big number. it could be bigger but it's a big number, for one year, 32,000 competitions happened. to continue on in myk mckenzie also said this, while tens of thousands of prizes and awards are give out every year, we've been struck by the lack of conferences or professional associations to share best practices and facilitate collaboration. now there's some kind of relationship between what doing here today, and that. i don't know exactly what it is, but hopefully by the end of

tonight and tomorrow, we can start j we're doing here, can really start toqphp having an organization, or, you know, somethingd exactly what mckenzie is saying is missing. so this just brings me to myó last question. and it's why are we here. here inca this room. that's just one side of it. i'm not talking about why we're here in som galactic cosmic sense of theá@ word. what i'm talking about is a more important part of that question. i am missing a slide in there. so the important part of that question was why are we here in san francisco. and we're here in san francisco because san francisco is one of the most innovative cities in

the galaxy, and it's a very great place to be the home of the challenge america summit, the first-ever challenge america summit. so it's now my job to introduce our first speaker of the night, who is going to officially kick off the first-ever challenge america summit, somebody who has been verylfe instrumental in creating a movement around innovation in san francisco. just a few months ago, announced october as innovation month inla whole lot of work on, you know, creating a@g real ecosystem for entrepreneurs, for governments, for everybody to create new ideas and new innovations. please join me in welcoming mayor ed lee to the floor. >> [applause.] >> thank you. thank you, josh. welcome, everybody. now that i know where i'm at, i

want to welcome all of you, i want to of course thank the night challenge -- night rover challenge, nasa, of course, for being here. i also want to thank s.p.u.r. again for hosting it. you know, when i started working with s.p.u.r. many years ago, i knew they were a spacey people. didn't realize it would ultimately end like this. wanted to thank s.p.u.r. because they really have always been host for so many of our great ideas of how to do better planning in the city. i also want to thank -- i know jennifer is here as well -- i told you when i first met you, i love your title, director of prizes? are you kidding? of course she has the longer title, but i thought that when bevan dufty and i were creating the director of hope in san francisco that we thought we had a pretty good title but now i'm going to change over, director of prizes. i may have to adopt that for some of our programs. but that's exciting for you to

be here as well. certainly for green tech, open, for their contributions here, because it's really a neat blend, with the efforts that we're doing, both in innovation, as well as being greener and trying to continue earning the greenest city of america title that we earned just this past year. we've been pretty lucky. as i announced this innovation month, there has just been scores of ideas that has come forward about what we could do, how we could celebrate, and how we could expose a lot more about what our technology companies are doing here in collaboration with so many others. but i'll begin by saying, first, you know, there are some things happening in our city that are just incredible. you know, i didn't declare myself to be, you know, the tech mayor, even though i've kind of fallen into a lot of that. i actually wanted to be -- and earned the title being the jobs

mayor. the jobs for the city has been my number one goal. and we've been doing pretty well. when i first began last year in 2011, unemployment rate here was 9.6. and just a few months ago, we celebrated the milestone that it went down to 7.4. and that's like the third lowest in the state. well, today, we got some even better news. so how about we flip 9.6, a year ago, to 6.9. today, it's 6.9. >> [applause.] >> and technology is leading the way. we're home to now -- just within our 49 square miles, we're home to 1,635 technology companies, still growing, over 225 clean tech companies, more than 100 biotech companies, and we have owncone of those categories or growing more every month.

imgetting excited because that means a lot more jobs. i think we will soon lead the whole state. and i kind of say that too because marin county has traditionally been lower than ours and so has san mateo. i think marin county has been lower because we have their wine, you will probably have some tonight and san ma taiee because it's our airport that emploaxcju everybody there. so we will take credit for all three counties. i told jerry, i'm never going to complain to jerry brown, what he to happen in the state legislature, because i used the first year and a half to insulate myself from all of that, emotionally as well as programmatically to say i'm not going to let the state hurt our city or the federal government. we've got to innovate our way out of this economic dole drum and we are doing so with inviting people here.

those of you who take this word challenge, and really can really seriously bring that to fore with your best ideas, this is what i'm doing with all these technology companies. i'm not satisfied with just hosting a new company in the city, i want to know what they're doing, who's working there, where they're coming from, what they plan for the five or 10 years and how we can help them grow. as they're growing their jobs i want to know technologically how we can help. that's why i love going to accelerators, to find out what are the next five years that we're incubating so when it comes like what happened last week with dr. yam naka working at gladstone institute at mission bay becomes one of the newest nobel prize winners in medicine working with uc-san francisco and the pharmaceutical companies there, they're on the verge of discovering wonderful stem cell

research that will cure a lot of cancers in our lifetime. you're going to see some cures come out of mission bay. we're doing the right thing, we're creating this wonderful, exciting innovative spirit in the city and we're doing it, not just with the companies locating here, with the people that are here, we're asking employees of the company to step up, through our sf city, our tech chamber of commerce, and volunteer their time to improve things that are not working as well as we'd like in the city. we have on-line ability called improve sf that allows people to come on line, tackle a lot of the issues that the city faces, allow for some c)eative thinking, people who can't spend a lot of time in meetings with us, that can actually offer their ideas on line, and we take those ideas very seriously. so we've been working on things on like how to make muni faster, how to bring fresh foods to low income poverty areas of the city, and our newest one, just

to given you a sense, we wanted everybody to help us develop and design a new library card. talk about civic engagement. 2,000 submissions on line for a new designed library card. that leads me to a challenge that i would like to announce, as part of this night rover challenge, and that is we have been asking ourselves a question, along the lines of energy use in the city, something that has been hard for us to figure out. and that has to do with what would inspire you, as someone who lives in the city, to give your data of your own energy use in the city, like your home energy use? all that data about when you use it, what are your hot times, your cool times. how about if we try to find some way to inspire people to give us that]h data, in some coordinated way. because if we understand that 20 to 22% of our

emissions comes from1ar residenl use, you can imagine if we had that data coming from every household use in the city we could break that data down with involvement of creative people like yourselves, and then try o see where there's patterns where we could lessen our carbon footprint and talk about better energy use. that's perfect for us. that's what we're going to ask this challenge to present for our next improve sf challenge for the city. and that's what we'd like to engage people in. and then hopefully, some time after this challenge is announced, and if we can get the best ideas out there, we will be engaged with you to select the best answer. and if there's an idea out there that can answer that question about how to inspire people, then hopefully wq can go into november a hack-athon sponsored

by green biz and others to develop an app that everyone can use. that's a great challenge. that's going to be so worthy of contributing to a goal that we've had about reducing our carbon footprint as a city. it's not just the households. once we get that data out we could look at the data from a community.re level and look at e data from a citywide level to see what we can do. i'm encouraged by that. i didn't want to give my data up to pg&e for various reasons. now iú] want to give it up for this challenge because i know people will be creative in having thisçe challenge to be something positive for the city. i wanted to announce that, get that out there with you, and join this wonderful challenge that you have, and think about how we could work together. meanwhile, in between that stuff and in between celebrating the month and doing things we have to write a proposal to win the superbowl in san francisco. thank you very much. thank you.

>> [applause.] >> thank you, mayor lee. >> we are actually live now, and so good morning and welcome to the public safety committee of the san francisco board of supervisors my name is john avalos, the chair of the committee and joined to